Will recruitment ‘gamification’ drive diversity or replicate biases?
Will recruitment ‘gamification’ drive diversity or replicate biases?
Will recruitment ‘gamification’ drive diversity or replicate biases?
By Andrew Jack
June 03, 2020
Summary
From government office workers to private sector management consultants, technology is displacing human interviews in a recruitment trend that is accelerating during the era of coronavirus.
The formats vary but even before the pandemic, a pattern was emerging in graduate recruitment and selection for short-term internships: applications that take longer to complete and growing use of computer-based assessments.
Amit Joshi, a professor at IMD business school in Switzerland, is researching computer recruitment techniques.
A survey by the Institute for Student Employers in the UK showed that just 30 per cent of companies used face-to-face interviews in the first stage of graduate recruitment last year.
In a report last month, the institute concluded that "There is a strong indication that online recruitment may become the new normal".
"Volume is definitely a factor," says Dan Richards, UK and Ireland head of recruitment at EY, the accountancy and consultancy firm.
We cannot allow recruitment platforms to simply propagate the past with naive AI. One benefit Mr McNulty sees in the "Gamification" of recruitment is that it is more entertaining, easing candidates' frustration at traditional question-based selection - 90 per cent of applicants who have used the process agree, he says.
Cathy O'Neil, a computer scientist and author of Weapons of Math Destruction, a book critical of AI, says: "We have a long history of discrimination in hiring. We cannot allow recruitment platforms to simply propagate the past with naive AI, which is what would happen by default. Instead we must demand evidence that what they are doing is fair, and how they define fair."
Critics including Prof Joshi and Ms O'Neil stress that human-based recruitment is also biased, and that it is too early to tell the long-term impact on productivity of recruits hired using technology.
If technology comes to dominate recruitment, the disruption ahead may yet be far greater for employers, applicants and the education system that has traditionally prepared them.
Reference
Jack, A. (2020, June 03). Will recruitment 'gamification' drive diversity or replicate biases? Retrieved July 01, 2020, from https://www.ft.com/content/b24a7e9e-a1c1-11ea-b65d-489c67b0d85d